


Red Sky at Night

by SylvanWitch



Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Angst, Fire, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Minor Character Death, Scars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-19
Updated: 2015-02-19
Packaged: 2018-03-13 17:51:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3390692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SylvanWitch/pseuds/SylvanWitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>In Gascony, they’d had a saying:  A red sky at evening brings a black dawn.</i>  With a tragedy in his past reliving itself in his new life, d'Artagnan discovers that sometimes the new morn dawns bright.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Red Sky at Night

**Author's Note:**

> There are graphic depictions in this story of being trapped inside a burning structure. Please be warned if you are sensitive to or afraid of such a circumstance.
> 
> The story is set early in Series 1. Assume that the events of "Commodities" have not yet occurred.

Dusk hung in the sky like an accusation, blood-red and boiling, as though some distant part of the city was on fire. 

In Gascony, they’d had a saying: A red sky at evening brings a black dawn. 

Here, no one seemed to notice the sky, and it made d’Artagnan a little lonely for the old ways. Recalling his surroundings, he allowed himself to be chivvied out of his abstraction by Porthos’ sharp elbow to his unguarded ribs.

“Oof!” he cried, looking up to catch Aramis’ eyes on him. “What was that for?” he inquired of Porthos’ receding back.

“You were sulking,” Aramis noted with a smirk. 

“I don’t sulk,” d’Artagnan protested, though without much heat. 

“Then what put that look on your face, I wonder? Is it the fair Madam Bonacieux?”

“Constance is married,” d’Artagnan answered reflexively.

“Oh-ho! ‘Constance,’ is it?” Aramis threw a hand over his heart and shared an exaggerated look with Porthos. “I fear the young swain has given his heart over to an impossible love.”

“There’s no love impossible for you,” Porthos said, giving Aramis a leer and a knowing wink.

“True, true. But I fear our young Gascon has yet to learn a tenth of the arts required of such a…complicated…pursuit.”

“It’s not like that,” d’Artagnan rejoined, though he knew it was hopeless to quell their good-natured teasing. How could he tell them that Constance reminded him of Marie, his older sister?

On such an evening as this, when her work of getting supper allowed and if his chores kept him nearer to home, he and Marie used to lay out in the field behind their house when the sun set to watch the swallows in their dazzling flight and make silly predictions based on their movements. Auguries, she’d called them, using a deep and portentous tone.

“That one,” she’d said, “You see how it dips its right wing? That’s about the miller’s wife. Her flirting with the baker’s boy is going to come to some sad end.”

“And that?” he’d asked, pointing to a swallow separate from the others, who was ignoring the evening swarm of insects in favor of flying ever higher, up and up, until at the zenith of its flight it seemed to pause to catch its breath.

“Ah,” Marie had said, something genuine and solemn in her voice. “That one is about you, d’Artagnan. You’re destined for much greater things than this little farm of ours.”  
He remembered the way his belly had swooped like a diving swallow at her pronouncement. “And you? Which one is yours?”

At that, Marie had shrugged and sat up abruptly, rising and smoothing down her skirts. Backlit by the dying day, her face had been obscured in shadows when she’d said, “That’s enough, I think. There’s dinner to be got on the table. Draw me some water, will you?”

That had been the last time they’d told fortunes on birds’ wings together. He’d been twelve and she just turned sixteen.

“There, he’s gone off again,” Aramis noted wryly, slapping d’Artagnan on the shoulder. “It must be serious.”

Porthos laughed as d’Artagnan refocused on the present, noting that Athos had joined them unannounced.

Neither Porthos nor Aramis expanded their teasing to include Athos, who seemed in a sourer mood than usual. He was staring at the sky as if it harbingered disaster.

“Is something afire?” he inquired of the general body of men who lingered in the growing dusk, tidying up after practice and dousing their heads at the communal pail.

d’Artagnan intended to answer, was, in fact, trying to come up with something witty to say, when an alarm bell cut the peace of the evening and a voice shouted, “Fire! Fire!” from the street beyond the barracks yard.

The Musketeers turned toward the kitchens where Serge was already setting out their stock of empty wooden pails. 

d’Artagnan had collected the buckets automatically, their hemp handles familiar in his work-roughened hands, and he was already out of the gate and jogging toward the well when Athos caught him up and relieved him of half of his burden.

There was a line of frantic women and children already at the well, a bucket line snaking through a narrow, stinking alley and toward the next street over. Heart beating against his ribs, d’Artagnan risked a look and saw dense smoke and the dancing light of flames just out of sight.

“It’s close,” he said unnecessarily, swallowing around a sudden lump in his throat. Athos didn’t deign to respond, instead gesturing impatiently for him to drop their buckets for others to use before racing down the alley toward the fire itself.

d’Artagnan supposed they’d do more good at the source of the blaze rather than joining the bucket line, but he hesitated in the mouth of the alley where it let out into the street beyond, watching grimy faces flash past him, hearing shouted orders and the screams of frantic women, smelling the lung-searing, acrid stench of smoke.

He took two or three steps into the street, willing himself to join the rescue effort, but froze again when he came in sight of the building that was aflame, orange tongues licking from the second story windows, thick yellow smoke pouring from the first. As he stared unmoving at the unfolding disaster, he thought he caught sight of a face in the topmost window, pale as curdled milk in the dense smoke.

In his mind, d’Artagnan wasn’t standing in the mud of a Paris street but in the green field where he and Marie used to lay at dusk, only the sky was no longer full of swallows but alight with embers, sparking up into the night to land in the field and set the green barley smoldering.

Blinking as his name was called, d’Artagnan dragged his eyes away and saw Athos waving him on toward the fire.

He sucked in a breath that scoured his throat, coughed convulsively, and then moved as if in a dream toward the blaze. 

The intense heat struck him first and then the unmistakable stench of burning hair and flesh, and then the roar of the fire as it devoured the wormy wood of the ancient dwelling.

Then, too, his nose had been full of the smell of burning flesh, and he’d gagged, throwing an arm over his mouth, before rushing into the barn to loose his horse and drive the milk cow and dairy goat out.

“d’Artagnan!” It was his father again, calling to him from the far field, from which he’d begun to run when the fire had first painted the sunset with fire.

“d’Artagnan!” He remembered himself just as Athos gripped his shoulder hard, shaking him out of his fugue. “Are you going to help or just stand there gawping? The neighbors say there are still people inside.”

He recalled the face he’d thought he’d spied in the upper window and nodded his assent, moving toward the street door behind Athos. Ashamed at his weakness, d’Artagnan swallowed the sour taste that had risen with his memories, and followed Athos into the house, covering his mouth with his arm and wincing against the stinging smoke.

Inside, the roar of the fire was terrific, like they’d been devoured whole by a dragon, but d’Artagnan knew Athos’ hand signals well enough, and he moved toward the stairs as directed, the roiling darkness forcing him to flail about with his one free arm, feeling for the risers.

He stumbled upward, barking his shins, feeling ahead of him for where the stairs ended. 

The second floor was alive with fire, and he felt the buffeting heat shoving him upward to the third floor. Gasping, his head beginning to reel from lack of clean air, he crawled up the last few narrow, winding stairs to a tiny garret landing with room enough for only a single door.

He fumbled for the handle, cursed as he found the wooden bolt shot tight, and then stumbled against the wall opposite to put a boot to the lock. It took him three tries, and by the third he was heaving for breath, his lungs alight, stomach rebelling against the awful taste of the thick air.

The door opened into a smoke-bound hell: a face out of nightmares, twisted into a scream, hair smoldering, hands clawed and scratching. 

Scarcely considering his next move, d’Artagnan rushed to the woman, got her about the midriff, and slung her unceremoniously over his shoulder. She was light, her bones slender as a bird’s, but he reeled like a drunk, feeling for balance, and was only prevented from toppling over by the narrowness of the garret.

Once upright and more or less steady, he struggled toward the top of the stairs. Against his back, the woman kicked weakly, making it harder for him to keep his footing as he felt through the reeking darkness for the next step down. He thought he was losing consciousness, growing dizzy from lack of air, until he realized that the staircase itself was moving.

A shriek, as of a woman being slaughtered, signaled that the garret stairs, which were attached only to the wall, were coming away from their moorings as the wood contracted in the heat.

d’Artagnan had six stairs to go when he felt the whole flight give way, and with a wild, hopeless surge, he leapt into space, hoping to land well but despairing of it, feeling the woman’s weight spin him so that he struck the second floor landing on his heels, which skidded from under him. 

He went down hard, the back of his head striking the floor, teeth snapping together, embers like comets streaking across his sight as he struggled to shake away the pain, to gain a breath here on the floor, where the air was marginally clearer.

The woman, half sprawling across his chest, stirred feebly, and he struggled to push her aside and get to his own feet. It was an almost impossible effort. The air was too hot to breathe, and his chest ached like he’d been horse-kicked. He wobbled to his hands and knees, head hanging down as he heaved up a mouthful of bitter yellow bile, which he spat onto the floor.

When the glob sizzled, he registered the searing heat against his palms and knees, and he levered himself upward with terrific effort, reaching down toward the woman, who was scrabbling at the floor with her nails, grey hair dragging through his sick.

He pulled her upright, got a shoulder under her, and promptly ducked as a beam came loose overhead and pierced the floor where he’d just been laying.

Staggering, lungs like iron heavy in his chest, heart throbbing painfully against his ribs, d’Artagnan took the next set of stairs one at a time, gaining only inches in the process. Overhead, another shriek followed by a percussive whoomph told him that a roof spar had surrendered to the flames and fresh air was pouring in to feed them.

He put his head down, fighting for equilibrium against the swimming in his head and the impossible constriction of his chest.

He thought he heard a voice calling his name—not even his name, just a moan that might be mistaken for ancient wood giving up its last strength—and he was, like that, transported to the barn on his family farm, hearing the hay overhead as it caught like torches, the terrorized screams of the horse, the incessant bleating of the goat, and the mournful, hopeless lowing of their cow.

The horse had fought him for every inch until he’d torn off his shirt and covered its eyes, leading it step by faltering step until it caught scent of the outside air and bolted. He’d gone back for the goat, which had trotted out on its own, and then for the cow, a most obstinate old Bessie who’d refused to leave her stall even when he’d taken up a length of rein and begun lashing her.

At last, as the hair had started to singe from his forearms and his breath had begun to come short, she’d lumbered out of the stall, throwing him against the door as she made her panicked way to freedom.

Then he’d heard something from further in, at the very end of the long aisle down the center, where they heaped the straw for strewing in the stalls of a morning. The smoke had been thick, the roar of the fire in the loft above growing louder as d’Artagnan had made his way deeper into the gloom.

“Hello?” he’d tried calling, but his voice died in his throat, the super-heated air a searing punishment every time he tried to draw breath.

He’d been about to turn away, hearing his father shouting above the colossal noise of the inferno, when he’d caught a flash of white movement and realized that there was someone in the straw.

Jogging the final yards, d’Artagnan had been shocked into stillness by the sight that greeted him—Marie, dressed only in a smoldering shift, sprawled senseless in the straw.

She was too big for him to carry—at twelve he’d be a slight and gangling creature—so he’d dragged her down the aisle toward the distant, dimming promise of light and fresh air and life.

The hay loft had started to disintegrate, and they were showered by burning hay as he tugged on his sister’s outstretched arms. Three times he’d had to stop to put out fires in her shift and a fourth time to stomp on the ends of her loose hair, which had caught like slender wicks.

When his father had found him or how, d’Artagnan had never remembered. He’d come to on his belly, his breath a wheezing agony, eyes burning and tearing so much that the whole world was under water.

This time, the first thing d’Artagnan saw clearly was Athos’ begrimed face bending near to his, the first thing he felt a damp cloth against his burning cheek.

“Is she—?” he tried to ask, but a fit of coughing turned into gagging heaves and then broken gasps as he tried to breathe around the nails piercing his throat and chest.

“Your fair lady is all of a piece,” Aramis informed him, heaving into view over Athos’ shoulder. “Seems the family kept their mad old mother in the attic.”

d’Artagnan turned a questioning look on Athos, asking how he’d fared in his rescue attempt. Athos’ single, stricken look told d’Artagnan all that he needed to know. He followed Athos’ glance, turning his head painfully against the ground, until he saw a small family group kneeling in the street around a shrouded, slight figure.

“Who?” he managed.

“Their daughter, Anna,” Aramis supplied. “She had hidden in the cellar. Athos did all he could, but it was too late.”

Regret, so familiar on Athos’ face, seemed to have etched deeper lines there, and d’Artagnan remembered the same expression on his father’s face.

When d’Artagnan had come to in the barley beyond the still-burning barn, he’d felt a breath-stealing pain so vast and consuming that he’d sunk once more into senselessness, awakening again four days later with his shoulders and back a screaming mess of poultice and blisters and his father’s sad eyes telling him that his sacrifice had been for naught.

He’d been delirious with fever when they’d buried Marie, and it wasn’t until months later, when he’d finally been allowed to once again walk to the village, that d’Artagnan discovered what real pain was.

People he’d known all his life—Alice, the baker’s wife; Pierre, the town drunk; Alsace, the cook up at the manor; even Father Ambrose, who’d baptized every one of his siblings and himself—failed to meet his gaze. He hadn’t expected a parade, but he’d been hoping for something, some small joy at his return to the daily life of the village. 

Instead, he got nothing but awkward stares and whispers, at least until he’d come to the foundry, where he’d been tasked with picking up a mended bit. There, he’d encountered Brusard, the smith’s boy, a burly, red-faced tyrant who nevertheless had always had a soft spot for d’Artagnan largely because he’d also had an eye for Marie.

It was from Brusard’s mouth that d’Artagnan had first heard the word “whore” in conjunction with Marie’s name.

“Guess that’s what a girl gets when she spreads her legs in a barn loft, eh?” Brusard said, nudging d’Artagnan a little too hard, sending him into the side of the cooling trough. “A taste of hellfire?”

“What are you talking about?” he’d asked, a little angry but mostly confused.  
“Your sister was getting up to no good when she got hers is how I heard it,” Brusard gloated. “Meeting some beau, I guess. How else do you explain her bein’ naked in the middle of the day?”

d’Artagnan had been too stunned by the sheer audacity of Brusard’s lies to protest that Marie hadn’t been in the hay loft at all, nor had she been naked. Once he’d recovered his wits, he’d realized that there had been something odd about the state he’d found his sister in, and that was hardly a fitting response to Brusard’s outrageous calumny.

Still healing burns forgotten, d’Artagnan had lunged at Brusard, fists swinging ineffectually, and when Brusard’s father had pulled the boy off of d’Artagnan, he’d said, “One bad seed and the whole crop’s ruined, I see,” before telling d’Artagnan to take his lousy bit and find another smithy to do the mending.

“We don’t do business with your kind around here.”

By the time he’d arrived home, breathless from running, face streaked with sweat, blood, and tears, d’Artagnan had understood two things:

The world would never be the same.

And he had to learn to fight.

The lesson in humility he’d taken that afternoon at Brusard’s brutal hands was one that d’Artagnan had never forgotten. Intent upon driving the ugliness from every leering glance, silencing every harping tongue that tried to speak ill of his sister, d’Artagnan took up first a willow switch and then a wooden sword and finally an old foil his father had brought out of a mysterious chest kept locked in a chest.

As he’d given it to d’Artagnan, his father had said, “You understand that what happened to Marie isn’t your fault.” It wasn’t a question, but d’Artagnan had nodded anyway. 

The family itself hadn’t known of her condition until the woman they’d called from the village to prepare her body had discovered that Marie had been pregnant and wasted no time bruiting the news all over town. In the meanwhile, d’Artagnan’s father had speculated that Marie had had an assignation with the father of her child, fallen asleep after the boy had departed, and then somehow the hay in the loft had caught fire.

As it was d’Artagnan’s job to ensure that no damp hay was put up and to check the loft periodically for hot spots, it would be easy enough to imagine that he had blamed himself for Marie’s death.

That he didn’t blame himself at all was largely the effect of d’Artagnan’s private theory of what had happened to his sister: Marie had been murdered by the lover who’d made her pregnant. Confronted with the irrefutable evidence of his seduction, he’d struck her senseless and set fire to the barn. 

d’Artagnan had never shared his version of events with his father, but he’d nursed it through many a schoolyard fight and then in yet more tavern brawls. He’d used his fists at first, and then, as he gained height and weight and confidence, any object to hand. Finally, when he’d been tall enough and possessed of enough skill, d’Artagnan had used his rage at the injustices heaped upon his innocent sister’s name to fuel the first of several duels he’d fought under the twin oaks at the edge of town, village statutes and royal decrees be damned.

So it had been that Marie’s last swallow’s-wing prediction for her brother had come true indirectly because of her. Had d’Artagnan not fought for her honor, he may never have challenged Athos to a duel and would certainly not now be surrounded by concerned faces, hands reaching down to urge him to sit up, to help him stand, to steady his staggering gait as he relearned the shape of the earth beneath his boots.

“I think a drink or three is in order,” Porthos noted once it was clear that d’Artagnan was more or less ambulatory, if still wheezing like a broken bellows.

“That’s what you always think,” Aramis noted, but he wasn’t arguing the point.

As they made their way to the tavern, keeping to a slow amble to accommodate d’Artagnan’s state, Athos was never far from d’Artagnan’s shoulder, his hand hovering near the small of his back to keep him steady.

“Are you alright?” d’Artagnan thought to ask after a shameful lapse of time.

Athos nodded. “Fine.”

“Alas, the same cannot be said for your shirt,” Aramis remarked. Indeed, both Athos and d’Artagnan looked like they’d just crawled up from the pits of hell.

“In fact,” Aramis said slowly, “Perhaps it’s best you two not be seen with us. I have a reputation to maintain, after all.”

“Given how often people tell you to go to the devil, I’d think being seen with us could only satisfy your critics,” Athos answered drily.

Aramis laughed, a ringing sound that carried over the low hum of noise coming from just beyond the open door of their usual tavern.

“Still, shall we retire to your abode, fearless leader? The both of you can clean up, and I can tend to the wounded.” At Aramis’ nod in his direction, d’Artagnan opened his mouth to protest, but he was overtaken by another fit of coughing, which rather robbed him of his argument.

“I can attend to d’Artagnan,” Athos said then. Aramis opened his mouth to rejoin when Porthos gripped his shoulder and said, “C’mon. There’s hardly room for one hero in Athos’ miserable lodgings, never mind the four of us.”  
d’Artagnan was exhausted from his efforts and felt numb all over, so he couldn’t divine the import of the transformation Aramis’ expression undertook at Porthos’ words, only that he had, yet again, missed something. Still, he’d grown used to being just outside what these three men had with one another, and it was beyond him to feel anything at that moment.

A gentle shove at his back recalled him to Athos’ purpose, and they moved in the direction of a neighborhood of narrow, winding streets where the houses crowded and leaned toward one another overhead. 

d’Artagnan’s feet were dragging by the time they reached a rickety exterior staircase that led up into the brooding darkness of one of the warren of leaning structures through which they’d passed to get here. Had he been fully alert, d’Artagnan probably could have not found his way back out. As it was, he could barely make it up the three flights to the Spartan garret space that Athos apparently called home.

As Athos lit a fire in the grate, d’Artagnan revived enough to note the stench of fire on his own clothes, hair, and skin. He shivered, something cold creeping up his spine, and stood with his hands loose at his sides, unsure of what he was supposed to do next.

With a glance at d’Artagnan, Athos removed his belt, tunic, and linen shirt and moved toward a corner of the room where a stool and bucket took the place of a washstand.

d’Artagnan watched as Athos doused his head in the bucket and came up dripping, water streaming down his chest, watched as Athos picked up his discarded shirt and toweled his hair off, wiping the worst of the grime from his face and neck and then tossing the soiled shirt aside.

“Come on, then,” Athos said, not ungently. “Don’t you want to get the stink off you? I can loan you a shirt.”

It occurred to him then out of the fog of shock that Athos expected d’Artagnan to strip to the waist, as he had done. Why he hadn’t imagined this, d’Artagnan couldn’t say, but the sudden repulsion he felt at being so exposed had nothing to do with the steady gaze of Athos upon him.

“Surely you aren’t shy?” Athos teased, something warmer in his tone than usual. “You’ve nothing to fear from me. I won’t say a word to the others if you’ve got a third nipple or the like.”

The incongruity of Athos’ uncharacteristic joke startled a huff of air out of him that might have passed as a laugh, if only his face weren’t stiff with exhaustion and a lingering sense that everything after the fire had been unreal, that, in fact, he was still trapped inside the inferno.

“d’Artagnan?” There was genuine concern in Athos’ inquiry, and d’Artagnan brought himself back to the room enough to shrug jerkily and reach for his belt to undo it. At another time, he might have found a way to get out of this situation, but he was too tired now, too lost, to summon the energy to resist Athos’ perfectly reasonable suggestion.

He stripped slowly, fingers clumsy with fatigue, facing Athos the whole time. 

If Athos found it strange that d’Artagnan didn’t turn his back to seek the illusion of privacy, the other man didn’t indicate it, nor did he himself turn away. His expression was inscrutable but unwavering as Athos pulled his shirt over his head and stood there, half-naked and swaying, clearly in need of commanding.

“You’re hurt,” Athos observed quietly, eyes lingering on an angry bruise spreading across d’Artagnan’s right collarbone where a falling timber must have struck him a glancing blow. He didn’t even remember what had caused the wound, nor could he really feel it, though by the looks of it, he would come morning.

“Come get clean,” Athos said then, reaching a hand out to d’Artagnan’s near arm to grip his elbow and urge him toward the bucket.

Forgetting in his stupor why he’d been reluctant to bare himself to Athos in the first place, d’Artagnan allowed himself to be propelled gently past Athos, whose grip on his elbow tightened suddenly, drawing d’Artagnan to a stop.

The weight of a hand on his back reminded d’Artagnan suddenly of where he was and who he was with. He dropped his head, overcome by a wave of confusion and shame as he imagined what Athos must see. His back had borne the brunt of the falling embers when he’d dragged Marie out of their burning barn. He’d sacrificed his shirt to blinker the horse, and his bare shoulders and back had sheltered his sister’s face as he’d bent over her to pull her along the aisle.

In the ensuing years, the scars had stretched across his back like a layer of cold wax, smooth and dull and dead to sensation.

d’Artagnan had been scrupulous about hiding his deformities, never letting anyone see him half-dressed or naked even in a meagre candle’s light, never mind the indifferent flicker of a hearth-fire. In the rare intimate encounter, he’d always taken care to keep his back to the bed, or, if he were ascendant, to be sure his lover couldn’t spy the damage from his or her position.

Certainly, hands had stuttered in their touch as they’d brushed across the dead flesh of his scars, but no one had ever had the courage—or perhaps, better to say interest—to speak of it to d’Artagnan.

“You’ve been in the fire before,” Athos said, fingertips tracing a lingering path along the live skin that rimmed the scars.

d’Artagnan, head still down, nodded, grateful for the length of his hair as it hid his face from Athos’ eyes.

“Tell me about it?” The query was tentative, as though Athos expected to be rebuffed. He was offering d’Artagnan a last chance at privacy.

d’Artagnan took in a deep breath that stirred the smut in his lungs and made him cough, his ruined back bowing under Athos’ soothing hand as he coughed up gobs of black phlegm that he spit into the fire, which hissed and sputtered as he choked and gagged.

When the fit had passed, he wiped his snotty nose on the back of his hand and moved out from under Athos’ touch toward the bucket, where he took scant pleasure in pushing his face into the murky water, feeling the cold shock of it at last bring him to something like lucidity.

When he straightened, the water from his hair dripped down his back, raising shivers wherever it touched what flesh there still enjoyed sensation.

Wordlessly, Athos handed him a scrap of linen, which he used to mop up the worst of the soot from his face and neck. As he drew it across his collarbone, he felt the first throb of pain from the bruise there, and he must have winced involuntarily, for Athos moved forward to take over the rubbing, until d’Artagnan was as dry as he might be and the ache had subsided once more to a background sensation.

The next thing he became aware of was the heat of Athos’ hand where it rested against his uninjured shoulder. The warmth seemed to radiate outward, up his neck, and into his cheeks, which were stained by the blush of sudden arousal. He felt an echo of heat in his belly and shifted subtly under Athos’ hand, half wishing the man would back away and half desiring that he should move closer.

A careful hand to his chin brought his eyes up to meet Athos’ searching look; he was asking permission without saying a word, offering d’Artagnan the comfort of denial. They could go back to things as they had been, pretend that there had been no equivocal touching, write d’Artagnan’s blush off to fire and fatigue.

d’Artagnan turned his face into Athos’ cupping hand, laid his chapped lips against the hilt-roughened palm, and felt Athos’ warm breath shudder over his lips moments before they were claimed in an almost chaste kiss.

This, too, asked permission, and d’Artagnan parted his lips in answer.

Yes.

Dazed by his earlier shock, brain fogged by exhaustion, d’Artagnan’s focus narrowed to sensation alone:

The heat of Athos’ tongue in his mouth and the press of his body against d’Artagnan’s.

The bump of the mattress against the back of his calves and the give of the ticking as he sank onto it.

Athos’ deft fingers undoing his own remaining clothes, an efficient, competent economy of motion that caught d’Artagnan’s breath in his throat, indeterminate sound coming from his mouth at the revelation of Athos’ bare feet, tapered ankles, strong thighs.

The scent of Athos’ arousal, musky and sharp, and of leather and sweat and smoke.

A taste of salt as he leaned forward and licked a milky drop from the tip of Athos’ cock.

The press of Athos’ body against his, pushing him back and down against the mattress, the pressure of building pleasure as Athos slotted them together and worked them both with his big, strong hand.

A sound in his ear, a wordless, primitive sound that shot an arrow of greater arousal to his core.

Coolness where teeth and tongue left a mark on his throat. Pinprick shock of it as Athos sucked his nipple and roughed it with his tongue.

“Come for me,” in a breathy, deep voice hot in his ear, and then the heat of Athos spilling onto his belly, pulling some deep thread of need out of him until he arched beneath Athos’ weight, coughing as his lungs gasped for air, and let go, eyes closed, teeth clenched, and burned from the inside out.

Athos licked tears from the corners of his eyes as he came back to himself, the smell of their spend heavy in the air around them, the heat of the dying fire brushing them where they lay tangled and panting in their own mess.

Athos did him the honor of pretending d’Artagnan wasn’t still crying, individual tears tracking down his temple and into his hair. Instead, he brushed a kiss along d’Artagnan’s open mouth and leaned away from him enough to give him space to breathe.

“Alright?” he asked, solicitude balanced with satisfaction in his rich, dark voice.

d’Artagnan nodded, throat raw, heart too, beating wildly against a new tightness in his chest, constriction having nothing to do with smoke and everything to do with a different kind of fire.

As Athos eased onto the bed beside him, putting his body between d’Artagnan and the door, and wiped away the evidence of their mutual pleasure with the edge of the bed’s single blanket, d’Artagnan turned his head enough to look directly into Athos’ eyes.

“I had a sister, once. Her name was Marie,” he began, closing his eyes to remember sunset and swallows’ wings and the feel of barley cool beneath his back.

**Author's Note:**

> I have taken liberties with an old sailor's rhyme, which goes like this: 
> 
> "Red sky at night, sailors' delight.  
> Red sky at morning, sailors take warning."
> 
> I should also probably credit Sophocles with the idea of using birds' wings as auguries. There's a line in the Fitts and Fitzgerald translation of _Oedipus Rex_ that always sparks my fancy.


End file.
